I glanced up, unnerved, and watched the leaves shimmy far above my head until they calmed themselves. Returning my gaze for one last sweep of the front garden, I spotted a figure in dark clothes heading for the side of the house. Where had she come from?
“I’m calling the police!” I called.
She turned her head, and I had a fleeting glimpse of a young woman’s face as she glanced my way. A face that appeared oddly luminous, glowing like the moon and framed by long dark hair. She smiled without malice or rancour—held my gaze for a fraction of time—then turned away, disappearing along the path to the side of the house.
I stepped back from the gates, wondering about that smile. There had been no guilt in her face, and no sense of triumph or even disregard for me. She had simply… smiled. The way you might at a friend or a colleague.
I frowned. If she wasn’t an intruder, why hadn’t she stopped and told me everything was alright? Perhaps she was a young relation of Mrs H, and thought I should mind my own business.
Yes, that had to be it.
Fair enough.
I nodded at the gates and turned for home and the sanctity of my own bed.
“Do you know anything about the old lady across the road?” I asked Cathy the following morning. Standing at the sink, washing up my mother’s breakfast things, she squinted back at me in surprise. I suppose she had grown used to my silence, now here I was quizzing her about something entirely unrelated to my mother.
“Across the road?” she repeated.
“Oakwood Villa? The house directly opposite us.”
Cathy pulled a face and shrugged. “The really big one behind the wall? No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” That was a shame.
“A friend of your mother’s, is she?” Cathy asked, obviously in her usual chatty mode.
It was my turn to shake my head. “No, she’s much older than my mother. She’s lived there since Moses was a boy.”
Cathy laughed at my turn of phrase and I found myself smiling in response. “That’s pretty old then.”
“She must be.” I mused over the old woman’s age once more. “I swear, if she’s still alive, she has to be a centenarian. I thought you might know whether she has any help at home. A carer like you?”
“I can’t think of anyone.” Cathy wiped her hands on a towel. “You’re sure the lady is still alive?”
“I don’t know. There’s somebody over there, because I’ve seen smoke coming out of the chimney. It may not be her, I suppose.” I thought of the young woman I’d glanced the previous night, and the shiny new padlock and chain. “It’s just gone up for sale.”
Cathy’s eyes widened. “That’ll fetch a pretty penny, I imagine. A house that size.”
“Maybe. I guess someone will get it at a steal. As far as I know it’s never had any work done to it—not even replacement windows or central heating—and the gardens are a right mess.”
“Are you looking for a new project?” Cathy joked.
I didn’t have a brass tack to my name. “Hardly.” I scowled, bitterness forging a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t necessarily glowering at her, but her face fell anyway. We lapsed into our familiar silence while she dried the dishes and emptied the washing machine, and I doodled box shapes on the margin of a free newspaper.
I dropped my pen and reached for a copy of Wuthering heights. Potentially I would start reading this to my mother today, so I began flicking through it to remind myself of the story. We would finish Jane Eyre sometime this morning. Cathy’s voice drifted into my consciousness as she headed for the back door to hang the washing out on the line in our yard. “You could easily find out the asking price of the house by checking the estate agent’s website.”
I hadn’t thought of that mainly because I hadn’t been interested in the purchase price, but now that Cathy had mentioned it I had an urge to check it out. Plus, wouldn’t the website have interior photos too?
Curiosity killed the cat and all that.
I cast around for my mobile, intent on googling ‘Albright Estate Agent’ and searching through their listings, but it wasn’t in my pockets or among the stuff I’d left in a pile on the kitchen table. Recalling that I’d taken it out with me the previous night, I could only assume I’d left it in my jeans or the bedroom somewhere.
Not to worry, I’d retrieve it later.
“Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a stranger's hand will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this-
'My Master,' he says, 'has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly, - "Surely I come quickly!" and hourly I more eagerly respond, - "Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!"'
“Amen,” my mother muttered as I closed the book.
I raised my eyes to watch her. Amen? She’d never been a religious woman, only occasionally venturing into church for weddings, christenings and funerals. Had she decided to appeal to a greater glory this late in her life?
She felt my eyes upon her and met them with a disdainful glance of her own. Do not judge me, I could hear her saying. Who are you to do so?
Who indeed?
“Why did you come back?” Her voice rasped with a whispery dryness as she made the effort to speak.
I stood, pacing across the room to place Jane Eyre on her dressing table. Then I returned to pour her a fresh glass of water. I popped a straw in and held it out. Her eyes glittered as I hovered over her.
“Your letter. I told you.” Had she forgotten she’d written it?
“You’ve come home to watch me die.” Matter of fact: her tone challenged me to deny it.
“I came ‘home’ because I have nowhere else to go,” I told her, keeping my voice light. I didn’t want her to understand how hard I’d found it to return to her. To share a roof with her again.
And besides, this wasn’t ‘home’. It hadn’t been a home for a long time.
“What happened to that husband of yours?” she asked.
“We’ve been divorced for years, Mother.” I couldn’t keep the impatience out of my voice.
Her face cracked in what I assumed was a smile. “He saw through you then?”
I could have thrown the glass of water in her face. I was sorely tempted to. She must have recognised the urge because she reached out with a tremulous hand and grasped hold of the glass, steering the straw towards her parched lips like a petulant child.
“Have you made a will?” I asked her.
She almost choked on the water, laughter bubbling abruptly up from her chest. I retrieved the glass and placed it on her side table, then dabbed at her lips and chin with a tissue where she’d dribbled.
She giggled again. “You get it all, Lisa. Don’t worry about that. You’re all that’s left.”
I nodded, relieved. I wouldn’t be destitute then. I’d have property if nothing else, because I couldn’t imagine she had any cash squirrelled away anywhere.
“It won’t make you happy though, Lisa. Nothing will do that. We’re two of a kind, you and I. Misery runs in our blood.”
Later, as she slept, and Wuthering Heights lay face down and forgotten in my lap, I realised I’d forgotten to ask my mother about Mrs H. I turned about and glanced over the road. The familiar thread of grey smoke drifted into the sky. The For-Sale sign had slipped a little and was now angled slightly towards the ground. Maybe some kid had come along and taken great delight in knocking it wonky.
That reminded me that I wanted to look up Oakwood Villa on the estate agent’s website. Abandoning Emily Bronte
to my vacated chair, I crept out of the room and upstairs to locate my phone.
Except it wasn’t in my jeans and I couldn’t see it anywhere obvious. Cursing, I pulled open drawers, rummaged among my clothes and hunted under the bed. I even checked beneath the duvet, just in case. Then I returned to the second floor and looked in the bathroom.
Nothing.
Increasingly annoyed, but with nobody to vent my temper on, I slammed downstairs to the lower ground floor and hunted around the kitchen. Perhaps Cathy had found it and placed it somewhere safe. If she had, it was nowhere obvious. There wasn’t anywhere else left in the house to check.
I returned to the entrance hall, but the austere space had no hiding places to offer. I pushed open the door to the lounge—or drawing room as my mother preferred to call it. I hadn’t set foot in here since arriving home five days previously. The room was a study in reproachful melancholy. The same expensive, flowered chintz three-piece-suite that had occupied the room my whole life remained in situ, along with more framed prints—innocuous and inoffensive enough. Heavy furniture covered in a light veneer of dust sunk into a thick plain carpet and a large chunky television set in the corner of the room finished off the overall effect of a room stuck in the late 1980s.
Once there had been photos in gilt frames, but these had long since been removed. Our family had been airbrushed from the heart of this house.
I shuddered and took a quick look around, but my phone had not been placed on one of the trestle tables in this room, or on the sideboard. I walked out, closing the door firmly behind me.
Tutting, I yanked the front door open and glared at the street beyond. What if I’d dropped the phone on my late-night excursion the previous day? That would be just my luck. I marched down the steps and across the road. Lo and behold, there was my phone.
Except, it was nowhere near the gates where I must have dropped it when trying to slide it into my pocket. No. It had been placed neatly on the bottom step of the villa, way out of my reach.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I leaned my forehead against the railings. The padlock and chain were still in place.
Perhaps the same kid who had knocked the sign askew had found my phone and chucked it over the fence. But if that was the case, why hadn’t it been smashed to smithereens? And why hadn’t they simply nicked it? It had to be worth a bob or two to somebody.
Cursing under my breath I rattled the gates.
“Hello? Hello?” I called, instinctively knowing that no-one would come. After a few more minutes of inanely rattling the gates and calling out, my efforts had proved ineffective. My phone lay in full view and I was completely powerless to recover it.
Nothing for it but to keep an eye on the house. If I spotted anyone coming in and out, I’d have to dash over quickly and beg to retrieve my property. Given the vagaries of the British weather, within a few hours we’d have rain and I wouldn’t want the damn thing back anyway.
Puffing my cheeks out in exasperation I turned on my heel and prepared to cross the road. A childish giggle from behind me gave me pause. I spun about, expecting to see a kid hiding in the bushes, but there was no-one to see.
“Is there anyone there?” I asked. “Hello? Can I get my phone?”
But the giggle was not repeated, and nobody showed themselves.
I swore loudly, not caring if it there was a child hiding out to overhear me. I marched across the road and slammed my own front door loud enough for the whole Close to hear.
Of course I couldn’t watch Oakwood Villa all the time. I couldn’t see the street from the kitchen, and I wasn’t prepared to camp out in the living room, but I did angle the chair in my mother’s room to give me a better view. I spent an hour or so with her after supper, but she chose to eat very little and then dozed, so that gave me plenty of time to stare out of the window at the house across the road.
Cathy’s face was grave as she tended to my mother before taking her leave. I didn’t ask her what that meant. I could imagine.
She smiled at me as she left, reaching out to squeeze my arm. I made a valiant attempt not to shy away from her touch. “I’ll be back tomorrow at about seven-ish. Just give me a ring in the meantime if you need anything.”
If she dies, I took the subtext to mean.
“I will.” I didn’t bother to tell Cathy that I’d lost my mobile. I’d have to use the house phone if the need arose. Cathy had thoughtfully listed every possible number I might need, and tacked them up next to the phone in the kitchen. Hers. The out-of-hours GP. The Co-operative Funeral Home. My mother’s solicitor.
I waved her off and returned to my watch.
My mother snored semi-contentedly, her hands twitching at the edge of the covers occasionally, the way a dog twitches when they dream of catching squirrels or running on a beach. I wondered what my mother dreamed of.
She wouldn’t be running on a beach. More than likely she’d be wrapping her hands around my neck and squeezing until my vertebrae popped.
Bored with listening to a news channel on the radio, I made my way up to bed just after ten and read for a bit before switching the light out. I tossed and turned for a while until I realised I needed to visit the bathroom again before it would be anywhere close to possible for me to sleep. Before I ventured back to bed, I poked my head between the curtains and peeked out at Oakwood Villa, more from force of habit than in the hope I’d see anyone.
But she was there again.
A young woman with long dark hair.
This time she stood on the pavement and in the light, her back to me, looking up at the villa in front of her. I couldn’t see her face, but I noticed her odd attire immediately. She was wearing a long evening dress, the kind you might wear to a high-end party. It seemed oddly innocuous on a cloudy night in the middle of an urban-British street in a provincial city in the West Country.
The gates stood open in front of her.
I glanced at my travel clock. Nearly midnight.
I quelled the urge to race out into the dark in pursuit of my phone at this ridiculous hour, but it was no use. Before I’d thought twice, I was pulling on my jeans and a t-shirt and tripping down the stairs as quietly as I could manage. I located my trainers under the stairs and hastily yanked them on, then unlocked the front door and threw myself into the road.
Perhaps the woman heard the commotion, because she glanced behind her, much as I’d seen her do the previous evening. I paused in the middle of the road, unsure how to proceed. She smiled—her peculiarly enigmatic smile—then lifting her long skirts, wafted through the gates and retraced the same path she’d taken previously.
The tall iron gates remained open, the padlock and chain discarded on the ground close by. Tentatively I stepped through them, half an eye looking out for the old woman who had scared me so, all those years before.
My phone still lay on the bottom step. I picked it up. The battery was dead, but it seemed to be otherwise intact.
I could have walked away then.
I could have returned home to my narrow childhood bed.
I could have done, but I didn’t.
Instead, I followed the path the young woman had taken, curious as to who she was.
You might assume that following the fright the old woman had given me on the day I lost my ball that I had never set foot in the grounds of Oakwood Villa again. Well, that wasn’t the case.
Several years after the ball incident, as an angsty fourteen-year-old, with my brother already cold in the ground, I’d taken up with a group of similar-aged kids from the neighbourhood. My home life by that point was negligible. My mother had locked her heart away in the freezer of her soul, and while we inhabited the same set of rooms in our—by now overly-large—Georgian townhouse, our paths rarely crossed. Any affection she might have once felt for me had been withdrawn. I’d become a latchkey kid like many of my friends, but unlike them, where their parent or parents were working, mine was at home, hiding out in her bedroom with the door firmly clos
ed.
And so I’d looked for what I needed elsewhere. Entertainment, affection… just someone to pay me some attention. It wasn’t about drugs and sex, although there was some of that for sure. It was more a kind of low-level rebellion: a bit of shoplifting, sharing huge bottles of cheap cider from the corner shop down the road, carousing in the street after dark, bullying some of the younger kids, breaking into the park after it had been closed up for the night, that kind of thing.
Back then, I’d never known the gates of Oakwood Villa to ever be kept locked. I rarely saw the old dear coming and going. The only sign of life was always the single line of smoke emitting from the central chimney. I wasn’t curious about her because I was no longer curious about anything. Ian’s death, my mother’s relentless depression, and the oppressive atmosphere of number 27 Park Close had bled me dry of emotion.
We played a lot of Knock-down-ginger, where you knock on people’s doors and then run away. We took it a step further. One of the more adventurous lads—never a girl for some reason—would wait for the door to open and then attack the resident with a water pistol. Occasionally we even threw eggs. Juvenile, I know, but we found it hilarious, and the more apoplectic the victim became, the more we did it.
And so I was with my friends on the night we targeted Oakview Villa. At first I expressed a reluctance to be involved, partly because of my prior experience there, but also because I wasn’t entirely convinced the woman I thought of as Mrs H would even bother to answer the door.
“I don’t think there’s anybody in there most of the time,” I’d protested.
Gareth, the bigger of the three boys I hung around with wasn’t taking that lying down though. “Sure there is. Someone must live here, otherwise it would be boarded up, like Killeen Manor round the back of the park.”
Killeen Manor—now, there was a playground. We’d broken through one of the rear doors and explored there late one night. We’d held a seance and scared the crap out of ourselves. The place was a death-trap with missing floor boards and broken glass everywhere, but still it attracted kids the way a fizzy drink attracts wasps.
Midnight Garden Page 3